The industry self-regulatory organization that was supposed to police the brokers at the Stanford Financial Group acknowledges that a Stanford employee alleged in 2003 that the company was running a Ponzi scheme, but the organization did not follow up on the claim based of its own policy, which has since been changed. The disclosure comes in testimony from Daniel Sibears, Executive Vice President of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, FINRA, prepared for a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Monday. In 2003, Stanford advisor Leyla Wydler alleged in an arbitration case that the company was "engaged in a Ponzi scheme to...

Social Security's unfunded liabilities total $12.5 trillion in present-dollar terms over a 75-year timeframe, the administration's trustees reported Thursday, an increase of $1.2 trillion from last year's estimate. The trustees report showed that Social Security's combined trust fund can only pay scheduled benefits through 2034, a projected date that is unchanged from a year ago. Medicare's trust fund, though, is in better shape than previously estimated and will run out a year later than previously anticipated, in 2029. At those dates, beneficiaries would face the prospect of an immediate cut in benefits unless policy were changed in some way to...

Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming) needs to get his facts straight about social security. You pay 6.5% as an employee, Your employer pays 6.5%. You pay 1.5% to Medicare, Total 14.5%. If you are self-employed you must pay the 14.5% yourself. How could he say, because senior citizens expect their social security and medicare benefits when they retire, they are greedy? “Alan Simpson, Senator from Wyoming, Co-Chair of Obama’s deficit commission, calls senior citizens the Greediest Generation as he compared “Social Security” to a Milk Cow with 310 million teats.”

Pension plans continue to blame poor market performance for their continuing dire straits of massive underfunding. Irrespective of all time market highs, their actuarial assumption of 8% has been impossible to achieve and continues to be way out of reach. Municipalities around the country are entering the summer season with expectations of violence not seen in several decades. Yet many are cutting back on police and fireman, for lack of money, just at the moment they seem to need them the most. Finally, the repairing of roads and bridges, popularly known as infrastructure, continues to be postponed by the “City...

Berkshire Hathaway Inc has been sued by a New York bicycle courier company over an alleged illegal scheme to cheat employers buying workers' compensation policies. The complaint, filed late Friday by Breakaway Courier Systems, came as Berkshire's Applied Underwriters unit faces scrutiny over its workers' compensation policies, including some that have been banned by California, Vermont and Wisconsin. Breakaway, with about 300 employees, accused Berkshire and Applied of "siphoning" premiums through a web of illegal shell companies, with diverted premiums going to unlicensed out-of-state insurers. The plan amounted to a "reverse Ponzi scheme" where unsuspecting employers expecting to buy affordable...

They work for the government and even their closest relatives have no idea what they do. It’s not because they’re spies or nuclear scientists, but because their jobs are so arcane: trying to reinvent Medicare to improve it, and maybe save taxpayers money. In a sprawling, nondescript office park near Baltimore, some 360 people at the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation are trying to change the health care system, using the government’s premier insurance program as leverage. If they prevail, the U.S. may no longer have the worst of both worlds: unsustainable spending and unenviable results. […] Because the...

Call it Pennsylvania’s highway robbery. A pot of money from a huge increase in fuel taxes and motorist fees under a 2013 law designed to shore up Pennsylvania’s highways and bridges is not so huge anymore, as a growing amount is getting diverted to the Pennsylvania State Police. Now, alarmed transportation planners, construction firms and engineers are looking at 12-year Department of Transportation projections that show a fattening state police budget consuming more dollars for construction projects. Lawmakers are taking notice, too.

The U.S. health care system is unsustainable but it could be dramatically improved with more efficient care of our sickest patients. Medical spending is rising at twice the rate of income growth. Medical prices are rising at three times the rate of consumer inflation. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was sold to the American people as a means to fix those problems and make health care affordable. The vehicle to achieve this is, implausibly, a requirement that we all purchase overpriced health insurance. In addition to stipulating the benefit package Americans are allowed to have, ACA regulations also force insurers...

Another Government Ponzi Scheme Starts to Crack - Do You Depend on It?Government employees get to do a lot of things that would land an ordinary citizen in prison.For example, it’s legal for them to threaten and commit offensive, rather than defensive, violence. They can take property from others without their consent. They spy on anyone’s email and bank accounts whenever they please. They go into trillions of dollars in debt and then stick the unborn with the bill. They counterfeit the currency. They lie with misleading statistics and use accounting wizardry no business could get away. And this just...

Executives of a Pennsylvania green energy company singled out for praise by Bill Clinton were arrested on fraud charges on Thursday in connection with an alleged Ponzi scheme. The individuals are facing charges of wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy over their roles in running a green energy company that authorities say was an elaborate $54 million Ponzi scheme, the Associated Press reported. Prosecutors said the trio lied to investors that their “biochar” technology and “carbon-negative” housing in Tennessee made millions, but they had almost no earnings and used the money to repay earlier investors and for themselves. The scam...

The Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program commonly known as Social Security, which celebrated its 80th birthday on August 14, is projected to run an $84 billion deficit this year, according to the 2015 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees. […] During 2014, $646.2 billion in payroll taxes was collected from 166 million working Americans. But that was not enough to cover the $859 billion in Social Security benefits that were collected by 59 million people, including 42 million retired workers and their dependents, six million survivors of deceased workers, and 11 million disabled workers and their dependents....

When someone makes a promise that seems too good to be true: like saying you’ll be “stinkin’, filthy rich” if you invest in their green energy technology, it’s a good idea to look into that proposition with a little more scrutiny. That kind of attractive, yet ultimately worthless deal cost consumers nearly $54.5 million, federal prosecutors say. The Department of Justice announced today that federal prosecutors filed fraud and conspiracy charges against the three co-founders of Pennsylvania-based Mantria Corporation for their part in bilking millions of dollars from unsuspecting consumers. Under the scheme, from 2005 to 2009 the group encouraged...

(CNSNews.com) - Jeb Bush says he would considering pushing back the Social Security retirement age by as many as five years and scaling back benefits for Americans who paid into the system but who also have accumulated wealth. "We need to look over the horizon and begin to phase in, over an extended period of time, going from (age) 65 to 68 or 70. And that by itself will help sustain the retirement system for anybody under the age of 40," Bush, a potential contender for the Republican presidential nomination, told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday. Bush also wants...

“When people tell you Social Security is going broke, you look them in the eye and tell them they’re not telling you the truth,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at an event on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to petition Congress not to cut Social Security or Medicare. “Today, the Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.8 trillion surplus,” Sanders said. […] As CNSNews.com previously reported, however, the Social Security program ran a $47.8 billion deficit in fiscal 2012 as the program brought in $725.429 billion in cash and paid $773.247 billion for benefits and overhead expenses, according...

Islamâ€™s Self-Destructive SeedPosted By Nonie Darwish On January 23, 2015 @ 12:21 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 5 Comments Within the DNA of Islam is a self-destructive element: a prophecy by Mohammed in whichÂ he said that Islam will eventually be rejected by the world and would return back to where it came from. Ask your local imam, and heÂ’ll tell you: Mohammed doesnÂ’t lie.Incredibly, Mohammed himself was not optimistic about his own message and the future of Islam and Muslims: [T]he Messenger of Allah (Mohammed) observed: Verily Islam started as something strange and it would again revert (to its old...

The incoming chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee says raising the federal fuel taxes is among the options under consideration to replenish the dwindling Highway Trust Fund. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota says all options must be looked at to fill an enormous shortfall when the existing highway legislation expires in May. …

Meet Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky’s Dad, Marc Mezvinsky By Erin Dooley Sep 27, 2014 Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky has been dubbed “the Clinton baby,” but Chelsea’s new bundle of joy is also part of the Mezvinsky family – and Bill and Hillary Clinton aren’t her only interesting grandparents. Chelsea’s husband, Marc Mezvinsky, is heir to a once-powerful political dynasty. His father, Ed Mezvinsky, was a two-term Democratic congressman, representing Iowa’s first congressional district from 1973 to 1977. But in 2002, the former congressman pleaded guilty to swindling more than $10 million from family and friends in a Ponzi-esque scheme. Ed Mezvinsky himself...

On this day in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Social Security Act. Press photographers snapped pictures as FDR, flanked by ranking members of Congress, signed into law the historic act, which guaranteed an income for the unemployed and retirees. FDR commended Congress for what he considered to be a "patriotic" act. Roosevelt had taken the helm of the country in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, the nation's worst economic crisis. The Social Security Act (SSA) was in keeping with his other "New Deal" programs, including the establishment of the Works Progress Administration and...

After six tumultuous months, open enrollment on the new Obamacare marketplaces comes to a close. Once enrollment is over, a look at the marketplaces will give the nation a better picture of how well the Affordable Care Act is functioning. It's already perfectly clear, though -- to voters and lawmakers alike -- that the law is a work in progress. The first few months of open enrollment were disastrous, after HealthCare.gov -- the site that serves as the Obamacare portal for 36 states -- was launched with major technical problems. Still, the administration says it has largely recovered, with more...